Lamar

Playing an opponent that is without its star quarterback should be an advantage for the Rams.

But after failing to capitalize on that situation in their last game against the San Francisco 49ers, the Rams might get another opportunity on Sunday against the Baltimore Ravens.

Lamar Jackson sat out last Sunday’s defeat by the Houston Texans because of a hamstring injury, and his status for Sunday’s game against the Rams at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore will be determined this week.

Cooper Rush started for the Ravens in the 44-10 loss to the Texans. Tyler Huntley also is on the roster.

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Gary Klein breaks down what went wrong for the Rams in their 26-23 overtime loss to the San Francisco 49ers at SoFi Stadium on Thursday.

Will the Rams plan to face Jackson? Or another quarterback?

“You’ve got to plan for both,” Rams coach Sean McVay said Monday during a videoconference with reporters.

McVay was four days removed from the Rams’ 26-23 overtime loss to the 49ers, a defeat suffered despite the fact that 49ers starting quarterback Brock Purdy did not play because of a toe injury.

McVay spent three days with his family, enjoying the time while trying to forget about the defeat that ended when the 49ers stopped running back Kyren Williams for no gain on a fourth-and-one play at the 49ers’ 11-yard line.

“Was it as enjoyable as it could’ve been been?” McVay said of the break, “No, it wasn’t. But I’m excited to get back to work.”

The Rams are 3-2 after losses to the defending Super Bowl-champion Philadelphia Eagles and the 49ers, both of which are 4-1.

“I’ve never had any sort of growth that ever occurred in easy times,” McVay said. “You don’t want it to go down like that, but man, we’re going to learn a lot about ourselves and the people that we’re around — and I think we’re going to like what we see.

“That wouldn’t exist otherwise if maybe we found a way to pull those games out.”

The Rams are preparing for an extended road trip. They will leave for Baltimore on Saturday, and after Sunday’s game they will remain in the area to prepare for their Oct. 19 game against the Jacksonville Jaguars at Wembley Stadium in London.

The Rams will shed no tears if Jackson remains sidelined.

In two victories over the Rams, the two-time NFL most valuable player passed for a combined 485 yards and eight touchdowns, and rushed for 165 yards.

As the Rams prepare for the Ravens, they will be looking for “more sustained execution throughout,” McVay said.

The Ravens are 1-4.

“I don’t care what’s happened — this is a prideful team,” McVay said of the Ravens. “We better be ready to freaking go this week.”

Etc.

Inside linebacker Omar Speights sustained a high ankle sprain against the 49ers and probably will be doubtful for the game against the Ravens, McVay said. Veteran Troy Reeder or rookie Shaun Dolac could start in his place. … Tight end Colby Parkinson is in concussion protocol but is expected to be available Sunday, McVay said. Tight end Tyler Higbee (hip) and offensive lineman Rob Havenstein (ankle), who did not play against the 49ers, will be evaluated this week. Offensive lineman Steve Avila (ankle) could start against the Ravens, depending on how he practices, McVay said.

Lamar Jackson will not be disciplined by the NFL for shoving a Buffalo Bills fan who slapped the helmets of the Baltimore Ravens quarterback and teammate DeAndre Hopkins during a game Sunday night in Orchard Park, N.Y.

“The matter has been addressed by the club and there is no further action from the league,” NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy said in a statement emailed to The Times on Thursday.

A Ravens spokesperson said in a statement emailed to The Times on Thursday that the situation had been handled internally.

“Our players’ safety is of the utmost importance,” the team spokesperson said. “We have spoken to Lamar, who understands the impact of the situation, about the incident.

“While we will keep internal matters private, we have implemented additional security protocols — both at home and on the road — to better protect our players and handle negative fan interactions moving forward.”

Jackson and Hopkins were celebrating with teammates after they hooked up for a 29-yard touchdown reception late in the third quarter to give the Ravens a 34-19 lead. The players exited the back of the end zone and ended up near stands, where a male fan reached out and slapped Hopkins and Jackson on their helmets.

Jackson gave the fan a hard shove with both hands. While the fan was ejected from the game, and later indefinitely banned from all NFL stadiums, Jackson was not disciplined during the game.

The two-time league MVP later expressed regret for his actions.

“I seen him slap D-Hop … and he slapped me and he talking, so you know I just forgot where I was for a little bit,” Jackson told reporters after the Ravens’ 41-40 loss to the Bills. “But you got to think in those situations. You have security out there. Let security handle it. But I just let my emotions get the best of me. Hopefully, it don’t happen again. I learned from that.”

Addressing reporters the next day, Ravens coach John Harbaugh expressed support for his quarterback.

“Lamar’s down there celebrating a touchdown with his teammates just like you’re supposed to do,” Harbaugh said. “You talk about celebration and we want our guys to celebrate with one another. That’s the whole idea. I guess I didn’t know you’re not allowed to go close to the stands to do that without being attacked by a fan. …

“It’s unfortunate that you should even be in that situation. I don’t know how any of us would respond in that moment. I think it would be something where we probably would be thinking about protecting ourselves. I do think that. We have to understand that. You can always say, ‘Hey, I’d like to handle that a little better.’ But that’s a surprise when that happens in that moment, I think, for anybody.”

Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson expressed regret Sunday night for shoving a Buffalo Bills fan in the stands after the fan had slapped the helmets of Jackson and teammate DeAndre Hopkins as they celebrated a touchdown next to the stands at Highmark Stadium in upstate New York.

“I seen him slap D-Hop … and he slapped me and he talking, so you know I just forgot where I was for a little bit,” Jackson told reporters following the Ravens’ surprising 41-40 loss to the Bills on “Sunday Night Football”.

“But you got to think in those situations. You have security out there. Let security handle it. But I just let my emotions get the best of me. Hopefully, it don’t happen again. I learned from that.”

In a matchup between the two most recent NFL MVPs — Buffalo quarterback Josh Allen in 2024 and Jackson in 2023 — Hopkins made a spectacular one-handed touchdown catch late in the third quarter to give the Ravens a 34-19 lead. Hopkins and Jackson were among a number of Baltimore players who exited the back of the end zone to celebrate the score.

As several of those players walked past the stands, a fan reached out and slapped Hopkins on the helmet, then did the same to Jackson. The four-time Pro Bowl player, who also won the league’s MVP award in 2019, responded by shoving the fan hard with both hands, which knocked the fan backward.

The Bills reported that the fan was ejected from the game. Jackson was not disciplined during the game. The Times reached out to the NFL and the Ravens about whether Jackson might face any discipline for his role in the incident and did not receive immediate responses.

While he regrets his actions in this instance, Jackson told reporters he doesn’t see the need to stop celebrating so close to opposing fans.

“I’ve never seen our fans do that, so I’ll probably do it again [when] we score a touchdown,” Jackson said. “But it’s nothing against the fans, you know? I’m just celebrating my teammate scoring a touchdown.”

There wasn’t any celebrating to be had by the Ravens at the end of the game, however, after they squandered a 40-25 lead in the final four minutes. Allen capped a 10-play, 80-yard drive with a 10-yard touchdown pass to Keon Coleman to pull the Bills to within eight.

Two plays later, Baltimore running back Derrick Henry, who rushed for 169 yards and two touchdowns, fumbled the ball away to give Buffalo possession on the Ravens’ 30. The Bills scored on a 1-yard Allen run but missed on the two-point conversion to trail 40-38 with 1:58 remaining.

The Ravens went three and out on the next possession, and the Bills drove 66 yards in nine plays to set up a 32-yard, game-winning field goal by Matt Prater as time expired.

The Cincinnati Bengals have started 0-2 or worse in the past three seasons and Joe Burrow was 1-9 in the first two weeks in his career, so their one-point win against the Cleveland Browns will be a huge relief.

Even more encouraging was the fact the much-maligned defence stepped up to clinch their 17-16 victory.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers receiver Emeka Egbuka became only the second rookie since the 1970 merger to score a game-winning touchdown in the final minute as they edged Atlanta thanks to the Falcons missing a last-gasp field goal.

Las Vegas Raiders rookie running back Ashton Jeanty scored as they beat the Patriots in New England, and Washington’s Jacory Croskey-Merritt had an even better debut with 82 yards and a score as the Washington Commanders dominated the New York Giants.

Matthew Stafford became the 10th player in NFL history to reach 60,000 passing yards as the Los Angeles Rams beat the Houston Texans, while the San Francisco 49ers lost George Kittle to a hamstring injury in victory over the Seattle Seahawks.

Headline rookie Travis Hunter made his eagerly anticipated debut for the Jacksonville Jaguars, taking six catches for 33 yards as a receiver and playing six snaps on defence in a comfortable win over Carolina.

Top overall draft pick Cam Ward lost on his debut as the Tennessee Titans were beaten by the Denver Broncos.

Who knows if Kendrick Lamar will sit for a formal deposition in Drake’s ongoing defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group, after Lamar flambéed him on “Not Like Us.” But at SoFi Stadium on Wednesday, Lamar and his co-headliner SZA had a great recurring bit imagining what might happen.

In a fake video montage played between set changeovers, Lamar responded to mock-questioning like, “When you said you want the party to die, was that a metaphor or are you serious?” and “Don’t you think disappearing is a form of attention-seeking?” by blowing him off and phoning in a big order of takeout. SZA then lighted up an enormous joint in the lawyer’s office.

The pair’s Grand National Tour is a triumph of the unbothered. Wednesday’s set — the first of a three-night SoFi stand — was a bountiful, meticulous three-hour show that centered on the camaraderie between two of the most important acts in contemporary music. They had a wicked sense of humor about the performance too. At one point, SZA seduced a giant, slicked-up praying mantis dancer. If only we all had the same leeway when deposed.

Lamar, coming off a pair of Grammy wins for “Not Like Us” and a gleefully petty Super Bowl halftime show, is at perhaps the peak of his career. So it’s worth noting how inspiringly egalitarian this hometown show was — a hierarchy-free split with former TDE labelmate SZA, often fully meshing their sets together for their on-record collaborations. The format brought new energy and understanding into their catalogs, all while the pair gassed each other up as virtuoso live performers.

Kendrick Lamar and SZA at the 2016 Grammys.

(Lester Cohen / WireImage)

On Wednesday, SZA arguably made the most of the stadium-sized opportunity. SZA is a powerhouse vocalist and musical omnivore with a stoner’s comic timing (most recently seen in the charming comedy film “One of Them Days”). But she’s now honed her stagecraft to be on par with any pop royalty. Between “Snooze” and “Crybaby,” she was lifted on wires, revealing a gauze train in the shape of a chrysalis, to spellbinding effect. It took some real mettle to then perform her ballad “Nobody Gets Me” midair.

A surprise cameo from Lizzo paid alms to their long friendship, and a bawdy slice of her verse from Drake’s “Rich Baby Daddy” proved she can own even a nemesis’ material with her charisma. When she spun “Garden (Say It Like Dat)” into “Kitchen,” the dancers’ delightfully goopy, insectoid costumes and monolithic ant sculpture felt like H.R. Giger taking mushrooms on a warm afternoon in Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area.

When she and Lamar shared the stage, as on the Oscar-nominated “All the Stars,” “30 for 30” and their respective solo cuts “Doves in the Wind” and “LOVE.,” there was an alchemy between two superfans, their physical presence across the diamond-shaped catwalks reinvigorating this long-beloved music.

At this point, Lamar’s case for being the best rapper alive is fully closed. Of course he is. Even if you thought the title was a little wobbly after the knotty, skeptical “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers,” the acid-bath of “Not Like Us” and the L.A-embodying surprise release “GNX” slammed the debate shut as it spun off hit after hit. Who else could make a pitch-perfect indictment of the current American political climate onstage at the Super Bowl halftime show, while needling his most loathed enemy and spinning off memes with just a quick grin in bootcut jeans?

At SoFi, a few miles from his old Compton backyard, he drew from that monumental catalog and recontextualized it for this club-ready, venom-streaked era. The show’s format covered more than 50 songs between the two artists, so even when he only got to a verse or two, there was always something new or bracing. Here, “m.A.A.d. city,” one of his hardest and cruelest street cuts, became a meta-R&B number that made the song even more eerie. On “Humble.,” he was flanked by female dancers posing in vicious geometric forms, physically embodying the ego-check of the song’s chorus.

The Drake flame-war material was delicious fun, from the shots-fired kickoff verse on “Like That” to the relentless, merciless taunts on “Euphoria.” But the “GNX” segments, like the Tupac-conjuring “reincarnated” and the ice-cold “peekaboo” (and, obviously, the great Mustard-y howl of “tv off”) made the case for how this album will continue to reveal new textures and resonate in L.A. lore. There wasn’t room for a five-times-reprised “Not Like Us” like at his history-making 2024 “The Pop Out: Ken & Friends” set. But when he did play it, it was less about his archenemy than about L.A., a city with a new song in the canon, a definitive “Us” who were all alike in screaming it.

It felt poignant that Lamar and SZA reunited again for the set’s closers, the unexpectedly relentless Hot 100 fixture “luther” (now at 13 weeks at No. 1) and “gloria,” Lamar’s bait-and-switch about his complicated relationship to his own writing process. With SZA as his Greek chorus, he ended the night on a note about how all this relentless work was worth it to arrive at real self-understanding. An ally that will never fail, no matter who out there is deposing you.